Gadget Show 13

Name: British Gas Remote Heating Control Type: Remote heating control system Specifications: Click here for full specs Price as reviewed: £199.99 (British Gas customers), £229.99 (non British Gas customers) British Gas has come up with a complete solution to...

Back in the 1990s Finlux was a reasonably big brand owned by Nokia. They made pretty interesting TVs, several boasting built in satellite receivers and the quality was generally very good. Now the brand is owned by Turkish company Vestel...

LG is using Gadget Show Live 2013 to showcase what it claims is the first 4K gaming experience in the UK, displaying Codemasters' much anticipated GRID 2 racing game on its 84-inch LM960V TV. Billed as the world's first ULTRA...

Accessories companies selling headphones and mini speakers seem to be everywhere at this year's Gadget Show, but the one that impressed me the most was probably American firm OrigAudio. It was demonstrating a new range of personalised headphones, costing between...

With smart glasses like Google Glass and wearable fitness devices set to hit 70 million sales by 2017 according to a report from Juniper, one company that is hoping to get in on the action is Sunnycam. At this year's...

WIN: Two tickets to the Start More Live gadget show in association with Ford Focus Tech Digest have teamed up with Ford to offer one lucky reader a pair of tickets to the Start More Live show on May...

WIN: Two tickets to the Start More Live gadget show in association with Ford Focus Tech Digest have teamed up with Ford to offer one lucky reader a pair of tickets to the Start More Live show on May...

They say there's an App for everything, but there is always room for one more right? Especially if that app is one that you yourself have designed. To mark the launch of the Samsung Galaxy Portal, Samsung are launching the...

The votes have been counted, the correct entries sorted from the incorrect ones and I can reveal the 10 lucky winners of the Gadget Show Live competition for pairs of tickets to this weekend's event.
So, without further ado, congratulations to Mohd Imree Azmi, James van den Bergh, Gavin Bond, John Thomson, Steve Hamilton, Shane Day, John Ross, Andy Cook, Sue Fraser and Melanie Clark who'll all have tickets in the post. If you don't get them in time, the let me know. Oh, and make sure you come and say hello.Gadget Show Live

Mobile World Congress is just round 2009, which means that the dead spell between CES and MWC is nearly over. Next week the trickle of new handsets and mobile announcements will become a veritable flood, so before that begins, let's talk about five announcements that simply won't happen at MWC this year.
One: All handsets will henceforth come with a 3.5mm headphone jack
The headphones you get with a new phone ALWAYS suck - they're flimsy, cheap, tinny, and generally last all of twenty minutes when used in the wild. That's why it's possible, indeed desirable, to buy alternative earbuds from the likes of Klipsch, Sennheiser or Jays Headphones.
But the vast majority of handsets won't let you use them. Some come with an adapter the bulkily attaches to the bottom of your phone, but many simply don't offer the option. The idea being, of course, that you'll shell out for the 'premium' earbud accessories that don't sound much better, even if they do stay in your ear for more than ten seconds.
At MWC 2009, expect this trend to continue. Manufacturers, with the exception of a few music-based handsets like the Nokia 5800, have absolutely no interest in helping out consumers with this one.
Two: Battery life will be doubled, not halved
Each year, as handsets get more and more powerful, it seems like my phone's battery lasts fewer and fewer hours before giving up the ghost. I charge my N95 once a day, and even then it's usually struggling by the evening. In the old days, my phone could last weeks without a charge.
So it seems that battery technology simply isn't advancing as fast as phone feature technology. Next year, expect to charge your phone twice a day. The year after it'll be every hour. The year after that, we'll all be charging our phones through the movement of our clothes.
But this year, at MWC 2009, don't expect to hear announcements of dramatically improved battery lift. Marketers know that GPS, more megapixels on the cameras, and more memory are all sexier than a few extra hours' juice.
Three: A decent handset running Android
The G1 is great, don't get me wrong. I don't mind its 'chin', the irritating need to switch from portrait to landscape whenever you want to enter text, and the rubbish camera. But it's not the uber-phone that it needs to be to be the true iPhone killer that everyone wants it to be.
And neither are any of the other handsets announced for 2009. Android has so much potential as a platform, but its devices are really letting it down. For our shopping list of what the perfect handset would comprise of, see Dan's top 10 things to look for in a phone.
So unless someone's keeping something exceptionally well-hidden from the world, which is rare in the mobile phone space, then we're not going to see the mother of all handsets for Android announced at MWC this year. Pity.
Four: LTE or WiMax arriving for consumers
Perhaps I'm being unfair here, but it feels like LTE and WiMax have been 'competing' for ages as to which will be the next generation of mobile broadband. Well, I've had enough competition - can't we just crown a winner already? All this delay is doing is keeping my mobile internet slow.
I don't mind which it is, but let's get whichever into every handset as fast as we can please, without any of the crawling slowness that's characterised the switch from GPRS to 3G. Even today handsets are coming out without 3G. That's ridiculous.
At MWC this year, there won't be an announcement that next-generation mobile broadband will be available to more than a handful of consumers. That's a pity, especially as the iPhone has shown how much people want mobile internet.
Five: Some decent mobile games
For far too long, 'mobile game' has directly translated into 'tired gaming concept combined with bad movie franchise, shoehorned into an awkward control system on a tiny screen'. There are very very few mobile games that are worth the money they cost, although I'm sure Stuart Dredge over at Pocket Gamer would disagree.
The iPhone has helped matters by upping the quality standards, but it's also meant that there are few games where accelerometer control hasn't joined the shopping list above. What's really needed is for proper developers to make serious - hardcore - games. Games with great narrative, excellent humour and thrilling moments.
It's possible, even with the limitations of the device. But good games won't be announced at CES this year - no, it'll be yet another version of Worms, Deal or No Deal and awful racing games. Sigh. I hope that eventually developers will realise that mobile doesn't have to mean "rubbish".